[ti]open[/ti][003] time to throw hands!

He wondered if it was possible to drop all three of the Pokémon he had in one go when the inevitable rival encounter would show up—

And then he thought he saw a familiar blur of green; no, wait, it was a Yanma that had gotten maybe a little too close to him and—

“Oh, hello again,” he would greet the green-clad young woman.

“Still have some annoying tutorial quests to clear out?” he added a few moments later; the humor dry.

“This Yanma your companion?” he inquired of the Yanma, who was now buzzing around him—like an excited dragonfly normally would.

At least he wasn’t going to take the solitary road of ‘I’m a lone wolf’ in this server—why weren’t the remaining people on EUnoVR like this?!

who is this sassy lost child?!

Moment she mentioned about how this particular tutorial should be made skippable, he laughed for a few moments.

“You have no idea how much everyone wants this to be skippable… especially in other UnoVR servers, and even more so when you’re coming into the game and you already pretty much know everything there is about the franchise,” he would begin.

That alone, would be a clue that she was in the presence of someone who had already previously played the game; albeit on a different server.

It wouldn’t take too long for the rival to eventually come in; packing that annoying guitar case and acting all ‘cool’ and ‘better than you’…

“Oh, [tangent=balls]che palle[/tangent], can we make them shut up?” he grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. Not only were there two Rivals, the game mistakenly thought they were related…?

oh boy here we go

“Oh, no proxy over here. I originally played on the European servers before restarting all over again here on the North American version of the game. Shame you can’t import your character over from one server to another. Kind of like how that other MMO does it in some convoluted way—only instead of transferring your entire character over, you’re allowed to visit other data centers.”

He would then frown, because his own rival was packing the exact same smug smirk on their face; taunting him like there was no tomorrow…

And out of sheer pettiness, he couldn’t help but do the same thing as he’d done back then!

“Well… since I’ve already played this game before, this is going to be a bit annoying considering that I have an idea of what their Pokémon are… hopefully you’re prepared.”

He would then enter the one name he’d already settled on while his own ‘Rival’ was trying to shred some power notes as well.

“Since they’re going to be constantly challenging you, might as well make the name one you’ll never get tired of seeing, right?”

oh boy here we go

“Unfortunately,” he would sigh as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “And I know what the other Pokémon is, so we’re going to have some difficulty… I think,” he continued as his own rival then began rambling without further ado after their duel with guitars was one and done with.

“And you,” the other Rival would begin as he turned to face Alkaid with this cocky-ass smirk on his face, “…are going down! You think you’re some hotshot because we’re related?! Hell no, Alkaid. Because I, Alphard, am going to kick your ass!”

“Oh, shut up, Claude,” he would growl; having figured out the ‘naming convention’ for the Rival and managed to unlock the ‘nickname’ option (thank you EU server experience).

A few moments later, a Blitzle would hit the field, and he would then pinch the bridge of his nose again.

“Yeah. This is going to get ugly,” he sighed again as he summoned his snarky, sassy Grookey to match up against the Blitzle.

“At least my own rival has a type-neutrality against Grass so… let me know if you need help with your battle.”

oh boy here we go

There would be a brief few moments while the Blitzle began preening themselves; which caused his own rival distress to no end.

“…at least I got lucky with the Blitzle being easily distracted,” he would cackle quietly before ‘Alphard’ pretty much lost his shit. Surprised, the Electric-type would then canter forward with a Shock Wave attack; to which the Grookey would sigh for a few moments.

‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ the Grass-type would ask him.

“…your absolute worst,” he would reply quietly before pinching the bridge of his nose.

The Grass-type turned around to look at him, surprised; before cackling and immediately throwing out a torrent of leaves aimed at the Blitzle in typical Razor Leaf formation.

“Once I get this Blitzle knocked down, I’ll help!” he would reply; because he knew that two Pokémon trading blows that were neutral against each other would take a while…

oh boy here we go

A loud Screeching noise would come from the Grookey; temporarily halting the Blitzle in its tracks. This was before the Grass-type brought down a Taunt in the Electric-type’s direction.

Ooh, nice.

“You know, for one so incredibly snarky you know how to fight.”

‘What can I say, comes with the job!’ the simian Pokémon retorted back while the Blitzle was forced to backtrack and use another set of moves; all things considered because the Electric-type had fallen for the Taunt!

Switching out to a Shock Wave, the Electric-type would get caught on the receiving end of a Branch Poke that came right after it had chained into a Quick Attack upon approach.

“Aha, I see. Looks like the rival knows how to use chain attacks! Hold out just a little more, I’m almost done!” he would call her way.

dorime